If Amazon decides to put its second headquarters in Dallas, there's one site in particular among the couple dozen offered up in North Texas that has some irony attached.

Amazon HQ2 rising from the ashes of a regional shopping mall at LBJ Freeway and Preston Road would be too symbolic given the online retailing giant's role in the demise of traditional stores. Valley View Mall was built in 1973, and as with many malls across the U.S., its department stores slowly closed one by one: Macy's and Dillard's closed in 2008, J.C. Penney in 2013 and Sears in July. AMC Theater is open until the end of the year.

Dallas architects Omniplan designed the initial 500,000-square-foot building to be developed by KDC on the former Sears property. Amazon's specs require the initial building to be ready in 2019. That's when Amazon plans to start populating a second headquarters with as many as 50,000 people over a decade. Seattle-based Amazon said last month that it will spend $5 billion in another city building 8 million square feet of office space to house its plans for growth.

The primary owner of the mall, Beck Ventures, has been slow to tear it down and missed a year-end deadline in 2016, which resulted in the city terminating its agreement for tax incentives. Scott Beck, CEO of Beck Ventures, said he's applying again and expects a decision from the Dallas City Council before Amazon makes its second city decision.

Proposed Midtown development is one of several locations trying to be the home of Amazon HQ2. This site is at the former Valley View Mall location in North Dallas. Land owners and developers include Beck Ventures, EF Properties, Seritage, Crescent, Hillwood Urban and KDC. The proposed DART train shown on the map would cross through the property and hook up with another proposed east-west train on the existing Cotton Belt tracks. That line would go from downtown Plano to DFW International Airport.

(Beck Ventures)

The former mall site has been marketed as a new "Dallas Midtown" with wide open space for Dallas to compete with the land-rich suburbs as companies expand or move offices. The mall site is inside a 430-acre district that extends north of Alpha Road and west to the Dallas North Tollway with zoning in place for towers of up to 40 stories.

Beck believes a "dream team" of developers is in place to make it happen.

The Valley View proposal includes a joint letter from adjacent cities of Addison and Farmers Branch supporting the site. Beck is touting Addison Airport as a private field just a few minutes away as well as the proximity to Love Field and DFW International Airport and the new tollway and roads surrounding it.

It's one of the few multi-city endorsed properties, Beck said.

Last month, the North Central Texas Council of Governments, a group that assists cities in regional development, began a $1.5 million DART light rail alignment study through Midtown. It's proposing to connect the DART red line at the Forest Lane station just east of North Central Expressway to Midtown and up into Farmers Branch and Addison to connect with the Cotton Belt line.

The Dallas Area Rapid Transit board approved a backup financing plan last month for both the suburban Cotton Belt commuter railway and a downtown Dallas subway. Both projects could move forward without waiting for federal funds. The projects are estimated to cost about $1 billion each. The 26-mile, east-west suburban passenger line on the Cotton Belt would run through downtown Plano and to DFW Airport.

There's some tension between Dallas and the suburbs over whether one project would be prioritized over the other. Amazon's specifications for mass transit infrastructure seems to be fast-tracking it on many agendas.

Beck said this project will house two and a half times the number of people in Legacy West, , a new development in Plano that includes Toyota, Chase, Liberty Mutual and Fed Ex.

The larger Midtown District in North Dallas.

(Beck Ventures)

"It's good for Dallas no matter where the chosen property is," he said. To nab the "transformational" Amazon HQ2, developers will do everything they can, Beck said "but ultimately it's the city and state which will have to put incentives in place for Amazon."

With the exception of California, Texas has more Amazon employees — 20,000 — than any other state outside of Washington state. A good collection of them are next door in Galleria Tower.

Amazon Web Services has occupied five floors in the Galleria Tower since 2014. Like downtown and Uptown Dallas, there's other office space nearby where Amazon could expand while buildings are under construction, Beck said.

Amazon has said it wants to expand into its new HQ2 in three phases starting in 2019 and expects to occupy 8 million square feet by 2027.

Beck said all the local proposals that have been made public show "the versatility of Dallas and what we have to offer not just to Amazon."